Gallery Hours
Wednesday through Sunday
12 to 5 PM

Gallery Address and Main Office
LA Artcore Union Center for the Arts
120 Judge John Aiso Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(All correspondence should be sent to this address)

(213) 617-3274 Voice/Messages
(213) 617-0303 Fax
info@laartcore.org

Easy parking! There is a new underground parking lot open right across the street. The rates are lower than anywhere else in the area - $1/hr for the first 2 hours, $3/hr for every hour afterwards.

LA Artcore’s headquarters and main gallery are located at the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo, one block away from the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA): Geffen and the Japanese American National Museum.

Location History: The Union Center for the Arts anchors the northwestern end of the Little Tokyo Historic District. The building was formerly Union Church, the combined home of three Japanese American congregations, and was completed in 1923. During World War II, in front of this building, Japanese-American residents of the district were ordered to join those from Terminal Island, whose community had been razed 48 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Residents lined up with a single suitcase allowance, to join 10,000 people sent to the War Relocation Center in Manzanar in 1942. Many of those transported to the internment camps lost all of their property, and were unable to return to living in their old neighborhoods after the war, and scattering the community throughout the city.

During the war the building was used as a community center for African Americans arriving from the deep south in search of work in wartime industry as part of the 'Great Migration'. At that time much of the city had regulations based on race that controlled who was allowed to live in the neighborhoods. The Little Tokyo area did not have these restrictive housing covenants based on color, and quickly became populated with the new arrivals from the south. Three years into the war, the neighborhood was renamed Bronzeville, home to crowded conditions and 'breakfast clubs' - jazz clubs that were known to stay open until dawn. In 1943, the 'Zoot Suit Riots' spread into the area. At the close of 1945, the Japanese-Americans gradually began re-establishing a community in the area, with Little Tokyo remaining a very diverse part of the historic core of Los Angeles.

The building located on Judge John Aiso Street was damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, leaving it unusable. The Little Tokyo Service Center Community Development Corporation completed a multi-million dollar renovation of the building in 1998 to house three arts organizations - the East West Players, Visual Communications and LA Artcore, and is a successful example of adaptive reuse.

Gallery Hours
Thursday through Sunday
12 to 5 PM

Parking is free.

LA Artcore Brewery Annex is located within one of the largest artists' colonies in the United States, the Brewery Arts Colony, also known as the Brewery Lofts. It is easily accessed off the Golden State I-5 Freeway. Take the Main Street exit, then continue across main street, passing through two gates and straight to the end.

Carousel Horse at the corner of Main St. and Avenue 21

The Brewery Arts Colony is home to nearly 300 artist studios and creative spaces, and is believed to be the largest art colony in the country. It hosts two annual Brewery Art Walks where residents have the opportunity to share their studio practices with the public. LA Artcore was for a time headquartered here before relocating its main office to the Little Tokyo space at the Union Center for the Arts.

We're at the foot of a historic building that in the 1920's housed the Edison Electric Company's Los Angeles #3 Steam Plant. Connected to this building, an epic display of the bygone traditional bricklaying trade, is the famous smokestack towering near the crossroads of the Golden State (5) and Santa Monica (10) freeways. The tower is a piece of local legend, an old Los Angeles landmark which for decades read with the cheery and simple word "BINGO". The smokestack now reads The Brewery (the letter "B" is still original). Our door is set at the very center of the larger building face shown above, on the ground floor.